Say Goodbye to the King-Sized Snickers Bar

How Michelle Obama is fighting to make excessive chocolate consumption legal but rare-and giving Big Candy a boost in the process

In 1998, a Colorado handyman was snowmobiling in the mountains outside of Steamboat Springs when he got swept up in an avalanche that buried his vehicle and left him stranded in a blizzard. Provisioned with nothing more than two butane lighters and a Snickers bar, the man endured 40 mph winds and near-zero temperatures for five days and four nights as rescue teams struggled to locate him. Luckily, the Snickers bar he'd carried was the king-sized version. Every one of its 510 calories helped him persevere through the course of his ordeal.

In the future, anyone caught in similar circumstances better hope for a faster search and rescue team. Mars Inc., the manufacturer of Snickers and many other convenience store treats, has decided to phase out chocolate products that exceed 250 calories per portion. By the end of 2013, consumers will no longer be able to purchase king-sized Snickers bars. Instead, they'll have to make do with a product that Mars introduced in 2009, Snickers 2 To Go, which features two 220-calorie bars in a single "resealable" wrapper. In addition, Mars will also need to reduce the size of a standard Snickers bar. It currently contains 280 calories and thus exceeds the new calorie cap by 12 percent.

Mars is implementing the 250-calorie threshold as part of an agreement with Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), a non-profit organization that aims to "broker meaningful commitments" from commercial food manufacturers like Mars to "end childhood obesity." PHA was founded in 2010 in conjunction with the Let's Move! program, First Lady Michelle Obama's federally funded government initiative that aims to shape up the nation's tubby youth through a vigorous regimen of legislation, regulation, and mass jumping jacks. Mrs. Obama serves as PHA's honorary chair, and according to its website, PHA's mandate is to "monitor and publicly report on the progress" of its private-sector partners like Mars, and, more generally, to "make the healthy choice the easy choice."

While Snickers may seem like an immutable staple of American culture, it's actually been quite protean since its 1930 introduction. In its initial incarnation, for example, it weighed 2.5 ounces. In 1941, it hit 2.75 ounces, but by 1958, it had shrunk to less than half that size, to a wispy 1.25 ounces—clearly, mid-century snackers were much more easily satisfied than the hungry souls of Depression-era America. At some point after that mid-century low, Snicker started an upward climb, hitting 1.80 ounces in 1981, upsizing again in 1986, and eventually settling on its current weight of 2.07 ounces around a decade ago.

In England, the standard Snickers bar was slightly larger than its American counterpart until just a few years ago. In 2008, however, Mars U.K. reduced its size from 62.5 grams to 58 grams (or 2.2 ounces to 2.04 ounces). It didn't publicize this change, but according to the Daily Mail, when observers started noting that Mars U.K. was still charging the old price for the newly shrunken bar, the company explained that it had downsized its products to "help tackle the nation's obesity crisis."

That Mars U.K. had failed to publicize this noble effort in any way cast doubts upon the sincerity of its claims, and under further prodding, the Daily Mail notes, Mars U.K. acknowledged that "continued cost increases over the last few years" had been the real catalyst behind the decision to reduce the size of its bars.

Apparently, the various outposts of the Mars empire learned from this experience. In 2009, when Mars Snackfood Australia reduced the size of its bars by 11 percent, it prefaced the change with press releases and advertisements citing its desire to cater to consumer demand for smaller portion sizes. And now here in the United States, Mars Inc. has further refined this approach by getting the First Lady and the Partnership for a Healthier America to position its cost-cutting measures as a mandate for improving public health.

On the one hand, everybody wins. Big Candy gets an endorsement from the First Lady and her government-flavored organizations that lends credence to its supposed civic altruism. The First Lady, Lets Move!, and PHA get bullet-point fodder that show they really are making a difference in the fight against obesity. Hopeless Snickers addicts get a relatively painless way to ameliorate the negative consequences of their habit. (If you consume a Snickers bar every workday at 3 PM, and that bar is downsized from 280 to 250 calories, you'll decrease your annual calorie intake by 7,500 calories and thus lose a little over two pounds.)

But what about the children? Surely we want our nation's youth to be morally fit as well as physically fit—and what sort of example is being set for them when corporate dissembling is not just tolerated but actually rewarded simply because it happens to line up nicely with some powerful person's worthy cause?

The new Snickers calorie cap is also notable for the way in which it illuminates the way anti-obesity advocates tend to view the world. "The public needs all the help we can get and it is crucial that food companies get on board with this," Kristie Lancaster, an associate professor of Nutrition and Public Health at New York University, exclaimed to the New York Daily News in the wake of Mars' announcement. "This is both the manufacturer responsibility as well as a personal responsibility. There is a huge problem when most of the choices out there are bigger and more calories. It makes it so much harder for people to do what they need to do to be healthy."

In reality, Mars has offered smaller versions of Snickers bars for decades. A "fun-size" Snickers bar contains 80 calories. A Snickers Mini contains 42.5 calories. And while these items must be purchased in packages that contain multiple pieces, Mars also makes numerous bars which can be purchased individually that contain 200 or fewer calories. According to Vending Times, 3 Musketeers Coconut, M&M's Dark Chocolate Mint, and Dove Chocolate Singles all come in under that limit. Similarly, a standard package of Reese's Peanut Cups contains 210 calories, as does a standard Hershey's bar. A York Peppermint Patty has 140 calories. If you can't find at least a half dozen treats on virtually any well-stocked candy rack in America that contain about the same amount of calories or less than a Starbucks Grande Latte, you're just not looking very hard.

And of course your patronage of the candy rack is wholly elective. In theory, at least, PHA champions the conceit of "choice architecture" or "libertarian paternalism," which holds that institutions like the government can help people make better decisions for their lives not by compelling them to act in specific ways but simply by making "good" choices easier to choose than "bad" choices. Thus PHA's mandate "to make the healthy choice the easy choice."

The Let's Move! campaign and its advocates sound similar themes. Here, for example, is Eddie Gehman Kohan, founding editor of Obama Foodorama, which bills itself as "the blog of record about White House food initiatives," discussing Let's Move! in a PBS interview. "Let's Move! has been pointed to by a lot of critics as an example of big government intervening and the Obama administration wanting to expand the role of government to the point that it controls what American citizens eat," she exclaims. "For its part, the campaign says it's about giving people choice and educating them about food and nutrition and physical activity and allowing them to have access to a wide range of choices."

Certainly there are examples where this holds true. Installing a salad bar in a school where none existed before will likely increase access to a wider variety of fruits and vegetables. Identifying healthy food choices with highly visible labeling, as Walmart is doing with its "Great for You" campaign, can help educate consumers and encourage them to make better choices without reducing their ability to ultimately decide for themselves what they want to eat.

In the case of Mars' candy bar purges and calorie caps, however, "making the healthy choice the easy choice" is achieved not by expanding choices but rather by narrowing them—call it "Yes, we can't" progressivism. While this tactic may improve corporate profits and help the most avid Snickers eaters shed a few pounds, the Orwellian doublespeak is sure to leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

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The further we go in time the worse it gets. We inhabit an age of the disintegration of experience, according to Adorno. The pressure of time, like that of its essential progenitor, division of labor, fragments and disperses all before it. Uniformity, equivalence, separation are byproducts of time’s harsh force. The intrinsic beauty and meaning of that fragment of the world that is not-yet- culture moves steadily toward annihilation under a single cultures-wide clock.

Makes sense that the asshole who seized private property, skyrocketed taxes and forced 100,000 people into prison camps based on their race when he wasn’t busy sucking Stalin’s dick would want to downplay any infringement by the government over the self determinism of the people or government.

There would be war, but: Captain – 1st waddle-ers – charge!!! 3 steps…huffing and puffing. Corporal – is this up hill? Another corporal – actually, its downhill. Sargent in A company collapses from lack of food (he last ate 6 minutes ago)… MEDIC!!!! we need snickers!!!

While I think it is a bad call, obviously they believe this will result in higher sales or they wouldn’t be doing it. It sales drop then the larger bars will be reintroduced. This is how the market is supposed to work. This isn’t the government imposing this limitation. Move in, nothing to see here.

So Mars has jumped on the “more for less” bandwagon – meaning more money for less product. I was at a supermarket yesterday and I noticed there was one bottle of a particular brand of dishwashing liquid weighing 30 ounces and all the others were 28 ounces – a price increase by another name.

Yeah, ice cream shrinkage is ridiculous. We aren’t talking about an ounce or two any more. Packages are 1/3 smaller than they used to be.

Luckily we have Publix down here. Their store brand is pretty high quality – and it comes in full half-gallon containers. Sorry Breyer’s, but when I can get 50% more product for less money and it is of similar quality…. you lose!

Hey Obama administration, why don’t you stop giving MY money to pay farmers to grow wheat and corn surpluses? Why are you continuing to lie and say that high-carb low-fat diets are healthy? The people are learning the truth anyway: eating “whole grain” bread all day makes you just as fat as a king-size candy bar, and it’s just as non-nutritious.

When the corporate farm subsidies stop, and REAL FOOD (meat and vegetables) return to fair prices, the obesity epidemic will sort itself out. The rest of this crap is counterproductive window dressing (are we surprised?) to cover up how brutally our government has damaged our health with our own money.

My point is: the government doesn’t have to make laws to shut you down anymore, they can just do it. If Mars hadn’t played along with Michelle Obama’s idea, she could just make a call to the EPA. They would’ve marked a Mars facility as a “wetland” or something equally absurd and forced them to pay a fine or shut down, without any appeals process.

We already know how easily they can do this once you’ve offended some bureaucrat. Imagine what they would do if you offended the First Lady!

When I want something sweet, I often just buy ten to twenty Snickers/Mars/Hershey bars and just eat them all on the same day, for example. I get days-long cravings like that sometimes. This stupid bullshit isn’t going to achieve anything.

My neighbor’s kids stuff their faces with “unhealthy” stuff all day, every day, and neither of them is even remotely overweight.

Also, I wonder WHY the price of food is increasing. Hmmmmm. Must be the libertards and their free-market anarchy!

“You’ll know you’re among the people of your culture if the food is all owned, if it’s all under lock and key. But food was once no more owned than the air or the sunshine are owned. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key?and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy, because if the food wasn’t under lock and key, who would work?” ~Daniel Quinn

On the one hand, I want to go out and buy a King-sized Snickers to say fuck you to Michelle Obama and her ilk. But on the other hand, I want to boycott Mars for pulling such a PR stunt. It’s lose-lose.

This kind of product size/price manipulation is commonplace. I worked in a grocery store as a kid. Companies were constantly modifying the mass/volume of their products ever so slightly. The trick was to shrink the volume without alterring the face of the product. That way, when stacked on the shelves it looks just as big as ever, but isn’t. You can even mix the old and the new and nobody notices.

If your product gets too small you can do this: Increase the size while temporarily leaving the cost alone (20% more FREE!) After a few weeks you change labels and up the price. Everyone is used to the larger containers, but don’t notice that the per unit price has gone up. Then you can start slowly decreasing volume again.

tl;dr Price per unit mass is all that matters and producers are constantly changing it in ways you probably don’t notice.

This is plain silly. It’s not as if people decide how much candy to eat by the size of the units. It’s also not as if people didn’t know how to bite off part of a candy bar and save the rest for later. The composition of the candy is unchanged. You might as well fight obesity by making spoons smaller.

Hahaha, a decision made by a private company in conjunction with a private nonprofit on which Michelle Obama serves an honorary position, and Reason takes the time to piss on it. And the commentariat gleefully piles on with fat jokes acting as though the First Lady was some kind of health dictator. This article, in a nutshell, is why you will always be tools of the Republicans.

First Ladies (and, in the future, First Husbands [or whatever the fuck we wind up calling the husband of a female president]) need to be banned from any involvement in public policy. Starting with Michelle, if possible, but definitely after Barry is out of office.

We elect presidents, not their spouses. Spouses of presidents need to stay the fuck out of the public sector decision-making process.

Okay, I’m allowed one snickers bar every day. You know… these aren’t as satisfying as they used to be. (eats a second one) (feels guilty, eats a third one) (gains weight, gives up on diet, develops 20-snickers-a-day habit)

If she didn’t have a chance to consent, I don’t think you can remove her rights. She doesn’t run for first lady. Even if you strip all head of state functions from the first lady (which isn’t electable) she’ll still have intense access and some influence.

Hahaha, a decision made by a private company in conjunction with a private nonprofit on which Michelle Obama serves an honorary position, and Reason takes the time to piss on it. And the commentariat gleefully piles on with fat jokes acting as though the First Lady was some kind of health dictator. This article, in a nutshell, is why you will always be tools of the Republicans.

“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a ‘categorical pledge’ were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”

What he was getting at is, if it’s not “okay” to poke fun at the wife of the Top Figurehead in the country, then it’s not okay to do it to ANYONE in public life.

She – and any First Lady/Dude, from this point on – should shut their fucking mouths and stay the fuck out of public policy decisions. They can run for office (e.g., Hillary Clinton) AFTER the spouse leaves office.

It’s funny reading comments from trolls trying to spin this into their confirmation bias-fed fantasies of Libertarians as being whiney and overreactive when in actuality their scorn would be better reserved for the people in the government that think candy bar size is where our the priority of our focus, time and money should be currently spent.

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No wonder I couldn’t find any King-Sized Snickers at the store! Great article. I excerpted it and recounted my own ‘horrifying’ experience at the supermarket: http://spatialorientation.com/…..-snickers/

2. No, “the wife of Clarence Thomas” doesn’t count, because she is not there with him in the Supreme Court while he’s on the job. Michelle Obama IS there when HER husband is on the job.

3. This still isn’t about free speech. Michelle can say whatever she wants, but she is MEDDLING in public policy while her husband is on duty as Chief Hood Ornament*. That shit needs to end with the next First Spouse, if not right goddamned now.

4. I don’t know why I’m trying to explain this to a Team Bluetard, but I’m hoping at least someone with common sense will be reading it.

* Political comedian Will Durst:

“…Face it, most Presidents are figureheads, Reagan was a hood ornament. He had the intellectual depth of a ashtray. …”